Most people have experienced the loss or unintentional detachment of a garment button from a garment during dressing. This dilemma is particularly troublesome when there is inadequate time to sew or stitch the button back onto the garment. Further, problems of this nature: have become increasingly common as commercial laundries have recently begun using hotter pressing devices that result in breakage of plastic buttons.
Quick fastening buttons have thus been developed which provide a quick remedy for replacing these lost or detached garment buttons without stitching. These devices are typically attached to the garment through locking snap fit clasps which generally require mechanical assistance, such as a hammer, to lock the clasp. The problem with these buttons, however, is that the locking clasps are generally permanently locking and cannot be easily or readily removed from the garment once attached. Typical of these devices may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 194,094.
Another type of quick fastening button has been developed which is capable of being selectively attached to and removed from the garment through a releasable clasping assembly. Hence, these releasable stitch-free buttons can be removed and reused after a permanent replacement button is restitched in place. Patented quick fastening buttons of this type are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 191,649; 208,753; 348,934; 588,871; 1,050,380; 1,239,070; 2,574,014; 4,841,604 and 5,010,625; and United Kingdom Patent No. 588,871.
To manufacture these quick fastening buttons, a standard button head is typically mounted to one side of clasping assembly which is formed to removably couple to an opposite mating side of the assembly. One problem associated with this manufacturing procedure is that a large majority of these button heads, especially for mens button-down shirts, are the standard two or four hole-type garment buttons which are formed to be stitched to the fabric for mounting by threads. Hence, to simulate this stitched appearance, fictitious or non-functional stitching is stitched to the button head before mounting of the button to the clasping device.
To emulate the stitched appearance, these threads cannot simply be glued or placed in the holes. One approach would be to manually stitch the thread through the holes in the button and then anchor the ends so that the thread will not unravel. This approach, however, tends to be very time and labor intensive since the use of a sewing machine is precluded. Another common approach is to stitch the button to a typical fabric sheet and then cut out the stitched button from the fabric sheet, while leaving a fabric patch upon which the button is sewn. This stitched button is then mounted to the clasp device.
This technique, however, again requires substantial labor since each stitched button must be manually cut away from the fabric sheet through scissors or the like. Moreover, it is important to assure the mounting surface area of the fabric does not extend past the mounting surface area provided by the clasp device for appearance purposes. This added task increases the overall burden of cutting out the fabric patches.